Unicorn-Entrepreneurship: 8 Lessons From Melanie Perkins Of Canva (2024)

FAQs

How did Canva become a unicorn? ›

Canva became a unicorn startup by achieving a billion-dollar valuation within six years of its launch. The company's success can be attributed to several factors, including its user-friendly design interface, extensive library of templates and design elements, and commitment to providing a high-quality user experience.

Formation of Canva

Perkins and Obrecht were originally based in Perth. Perkins claims that she was rejected by over 100 local investors in Perth. In 2011, prominent investor, Bill Tai visited Perth to judge a start-up competition. Perkins and Obrecht pitched Tai the initial idea for Canva over dinner.

The Australian has just listed Perkins, who is only 34 years old, as part of the Top 10 richest people in the country along with her husband, co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht. That makes her the second richest woman in Australia. The couple are worth 15.89 billion dollars.

As of January 2024, Canva's design platform attracted around 170 million monthly global users from 190 countries. BUT it was not too long ago that now 36-year-old Canva founder Melanie Perkins was rejected by 100 VCs.

Canva's growth was fueled by its user-friendly interface and vast library of templates. The platform quickly gained popularity among non-designers who appreciated its simplicity and affordability. By 2015, Canva had over 2.5 million users and had become a global phenomenon.

Canva's logo templates are customizable and can be used by anyone. This means that your rights to the logo are non-exclusive and you can't register it as a trademark.

Obstacles Melanie Faced

One of the biggest hurdles was getting investors to believe in her vision. In the early days of Canva, Melanie and her team pitched their idea to more than 100 investors, and they were rejected by all of them. However, this setback did not deter Melanie.

Visionary Leader

An example of this type of leader is Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva. She is known for her ability to articulate a clear vision for the company and her ability to inspire and motivate employees to work towards achieving that vision.

Co-Founder and CEO of Canva. Working with an incredible team to empower the world to design.

No, Canva is not a Chinese app. Canva was founded in Sydney, Australia. Canva was founded by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams. It is founded on 1 January 2012.

Is it legal to sell Canva? ›

You can't sell any Canva content on a standalone basis. Creating an original design means using Canva Content with a combination of design elements (e.g. images, videos, audio files, other media, text, illustrations, background features, etc. ) and editing techniques to make a "new" creative work.

As a Canva Creator, you receive royalties based on your content's performance. For templates, how much you'll receive from the royalty pool will depend on how many template usages you have (i.e. each time a design is downloaded, printed, or presented). Creators are paid for both Free and Pro template usage.

Canva's founder got rejected by 100 VCs. They didn't want to back co-founders who were romantically involved. They didn't want to do an overseas deal with an Australian start-up. They didn't want to take a bet on a tech company founded by two people without much formal tech experience.

At just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins left university to follow her entrepreneurial ambitions and established her first business venture, Fusion Books. The idea behind Fusion Books was to provide an online platform for creating and publishing yearbooks.

Unlike many of its counterparts, Canva has maintained profitability since 2017, a notable achievement for a fast growing SAAS company. This is because Canva doesn't need to spend tons of cash to acquire users and has been growing organically thanks to a superior product.

In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.

The ESVCLP program played a critical role in the early investment Canva raised and its growth as a rapidly-scaling company. Blackbird's initial investment in the company from its first ESVCLP Fund supported the company to build its platform and go-to-market.

With the mission to get into every workplace across the globe, Canva acquired the exact brand match domain name Canva.com in 2012, as soon as the name was changed from Canvas Chef to Canva. Today more than 40 million people log in to use Canva each month, spanning across 193 countries.

With 185 million active users, a $26 billion valuation and annual recurring revenue of about $2.3 billion, the eleven year old design software company is already too big to be considered a startup challenger in a traditional sense.